I had a business trip to the west country last week and did something really stupid on the way back. I accidentally knocked over a bottle of water and my computer got wet.

It killed it dead of course.

It was difficult to come to terms with to start with, I kept trying to start it up, but nothing happened. But surely if I tried one more time….

We are lucky in Norwich in that we have an Apple store, so on Friday, the day after I got back, I made an appointment with the ‘Genius Bar‘. But the nice Apple man couldn’t get it to start either. “We had better get it examined” he told me, getting me to sign a piece of paper, “We’ll contact you as soon as we have finished”.

Living without the laptop

Life was very odd, without my Macbook. What did I do until they started manufacturing these? Strange and lonely. I have the office PC of course, but the Macbook is where I do most of my writing, read blogs, visit forums, surf the internet, and twitter. It was a bit like having lost an arm.

The family were not sympathetic. “You can talk to us now” said my teenage son gleefully, despite the fact that he spends most of his time staring into his Dell Studio laptop and frequently fails to answer us when we speak to him.

My husband has never liked the laptop (“that white thing”) taking my attention away from him, and invariably glares at me when the startup Bongg goes off. No sympathy there then.

Repair or replace?

The estimate for the repair bill came through, as £701. Yikes! Apparently practically every part in the machine needed to be replaced.

“How much would a replacement laptop cost?” I asked. The answer was £849 plus £79 to transfer to the data over. So for an extra £200 odd I could have a new machine. One with twice the RAM, a bigger hard drive, improved performance…

Happily the damage was covered by insurance subject to a £100 excess, so effectively I could have a new machine with all my data transferred over for just over £300. And I would not have to wait for the parts to arrive and my machine to be repaired. It was not the time I would have chosen for a computer upgrade, but there was no question which option I would choose. The only worry was whether my data had survived the water damage.

So Wednesday I went in and paid them, and yesterday and I collected my new machine. Its great!

The old and the new

The nice Apple people were able to recover the data and it had all been copied over and set up for me. So on opening the machine up it was just like having my old laptop back. All the software I had downloaded from the internet was there, all my bookmarks, the saved passwords for web-sites. Even the tabs on Firefox were still open. Just like before.

But the machine is so much better. The screen is much brighter, its like its been through the wash (which is saying something as the old screen was pretty nice). It seems to work faster. And the computer itself is nicer.

One thing in particular I like is that there is a shiny texture on the top but a more matt texture on the bottom, so when I am carrying it, it is much easier to set it down the right way up. With the old machine I was always having to turn it over before opening. Very clever.

Also the £79 I paid for the data transfer entitles me to get some training at the Apple Store. Its called Apple One to One. I can see that being very useful.

So not really a disaster at all, now its all over. But I am making sure that this machine is kept well away from any liquid!

The march towards cleaner, greener energy sees a flurry of activity for British engineers and manufacturing

At a recent networking dinner for engineers I noticed a greater buzz in the room than in past years. On further discussions with fellow members I discovered this excitement was mainly due to the successful formation of green technology start ups or the growth of privately owned green tech companies.

What is a green technology business?

The green technology sector encompasses more than just solar power – it also includes companies involved in renewable energy – wind, geothermal and hydro, in energy management, alternative fuels and carbon capture and storage.

A broader look at this market shows activity not only in the R&D and manufacturing of the above companies but also in consultancies ready to assist in the reduction of energy usage, and in specialist venture capitalist firms circling with the delightful prospect of both profit and growth.

The global market for this sector already stands at $3 trillion dollars per year and is on the rise.

What is fuelling the growth in this sector?

Worldwide and in the UK, uncertain energy supplies, escalating energy prices and international legislation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, have driven growth in this sector. It has been enabled in the UK by the availability of grants and loans from local government Development Agencies (www.englandsrdas.com)- partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/) and also by the injection of cash from venture capitals.

Is there government intervention in this market?

Government policy has had a major influence – for example Feed-in Tariffs. Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) are financial support measures introduced by the government in April 2010 to increase the uptake of small-scale renewable generation and help deliver the UK’s 2020 renewable energy targets (see www.ofgem.gov.uk for further information on FIT’s).

Npower (one of the major UK-based electricity and gas supply generation companies), reported an 80% rise in inquiries within four weeks for solar panel installation by homeowners happy to generate their own power and to be paid for any extra ‘fed-in’ to the grid.

Will future UK government policy help or hinder growth?

Currently the UK still only has less than 5% of the $3trillion global market – less than France, Germany USA or Japan. Green technologies represent a new source of jobs, investment and stimulate enterprise and the government is very keen on these things to happen on UK soil.

To help rectify this unfavorable statistic, the UK Government announced in October 2010 that it would provide £1 billion in funding for a green investment bank (www.greenbankgroup.com) as part of efforts to make the UK a leader in the low-carbon economy. The UK is the first country in the world to create a bank dedicated to the ‘greening of our economy.’

What opportunity does this present for an overseas company looking to the UK?

The UK is looking an increasingly attractive place to locate your business if you are involved in the ‘green revolution’ or looking to take this revolution to your home market:

Ease of entry: With the commitment of the government, availability of grants and funding and access to the some of the most sophisticated financial products in the world, green technology start ups are encouraged and welcomed throughout the UK.

Experience: Recent flotations on the London Stock Exchange of green technology companies indicate the depth of experience in this sector and financial viability of their innovations. UK payday lender (www.simplepayday.co.uk/loans) recently signed off on green technology, citing ‘irrevocably better options for customers’.’ If you looking to hire staff you will find experience and enthusiasm here – from engineers to venture capitalists.

Lessons learned: By observing successful enterprises their innovations and activities can be analysed – possibly with the help of the many specialized green consultancies, and their success replicated in overseas markets.

CONTIGuator is a Python script for Linux environments whose purpose is to speed-up the bacterial genome finishing process and to obtain a first insight of the genome structure using the well-known artemis comparison tool (ACT)

The event will take place on January 20-22, 2012. You can learn more about it here https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale10x.

]]>http://www.floss4science.com/2017/09/06/floss4science-scale-10x-media-sponsor/feed/0http://www.floss4science.com/2017/09/06/floss4science-scale-10x-media-sponsor/Interview: Andy Spencer, developer of Aweather a meteorological data viewerhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlossForScience/~3/79jMS6y91Kw/
http://www.floss4science.com/2017/04/28/interview-andy-spencer-developer-of-aweather-a-meteorological-data-viewer/#respondFri, 28 Apr 2017 05:43:13 +0000http://www.floss4science.com/?p=127This week’s interview is with Andy Spencer, developer of Aweather, a free software for visualizing meteorological radar data. AWeather has been on my radar (smart pun?) for a few years since I live in the Caribbean and weather is always a concern from June through November. I think readers will find this project interesting and I hope you will lend a hand to keep it rolling. Enjoy the interview!

F4S: Please, give us a brief introduction about yourself.

Andy: I’m 24 years old, I grew up in the Midwest United States and am currently working as an embedded software engineer in the Los Angeles area. I’ve been interested in Free Software for the past 6 or 7 years since first installing GNU/Linux during high school. I’ve mostly contributed small patches to various open source projects after finding bugs or when I wanted additional features. Of my own projects, they tend to be small, obscure, and arguable crazy, with AWeather being the main exception as the most “Normal” application.

When not working on software I enjoy spending time outdoors and have been interested in meteorology since I was a kid. Unfortunately, our weather here in LA tends to be somewhat less interesting than where I grew up.

F4S: What is Aweather?

Andy: AWeather is a program for visualizing meteorological data. So far it has focused mainly on showing radar data from the US WSR-88D (NEXRAD) network, but in the future I would like to add other types of data as well.

AWeather interface

F4S: Why and when did Aweather come to be?

Andy: Aweather got started during the summer of 2008. I was working in Norman Oklahoma at a Computer Science REU studying machine learning and winter precipitation types (rain, sleet, snow, etc). However, it wasn’t until the spring of 2009 that I picked up AWeather again and started spending more time on it.

While in Norman, I was fortunate enough to meet some great people and was able to learn a lot more about meteorology. One of the things I found out was that the radars used by the National Weather Service actually provided a lot more information than is usually shown on TV stations and news websites.

That’s really how AWeather got started. I wanted to be able to see all this additional higher quality radar data, but I couldn’t find any programs for GNU/Linux that were both advanced enough and easy enough to use without any specialized training.

F4S: In which languages and platforms is Aweather developed?

Andy: AWeather is written in C and uses the Gtk/GObject framework for it’s user interface. All the core rendering is done using plain OpenGL. I should point out that much of the rendering is done by the Grits library which was originally part of AWeather, but has since been split off.

As previously mentioned, AWeather was initially designed to run on GNU/Linux, but since then it has also been ported to run on MS Windows. In the future I would like to see a Mac OS X port as well.

F4S: Does the project have sponsors?

Andy: There aren’t really any official sponsors. However, the source code and homepage are hosted by the Rose-Hulman Linux Users Group, which I was involved with during my undergraduate education.

F4S: How many users you estimate Aweather has?

Andy: Haha, I really have no idea, there’s at least one (me!). I’ve received emails from several other people who have used it as well.

Until recently there wasn’t a lot of a focus on packaging AWeather to make it easy to install. That should have improved to some extent during the past couple months with the creation of Debian and Ubuntu packages though.

AWeather isosurface view

F4S: Do you know where it is used?

Andy: I don’t really, I would expect it’s mostly used by individuals since that’s how I use it. Being Free Software, anyone is welcome to use it though.

F4S: How many team members does Aweather have?

Andy: It’s mostly been a personal project of mine, in terms of source code at least. There have been many people who have provided feedback, testing, or helped with building packages though.

F4S: In what areas of development do you currently need help?

Andy: Packaging is one of the biggest areas where I would like help. As mentioned before, I would like to see a Mac OS X port of AWeather, but since I do not own an Apple computer I’ve been unable to work on that myself.

Another area that could be greatly improved is adding additional data sources. I’ve mostly been interested in radar data so that’s what I’ve worked on. Other people may want to see things like satellite data, temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, etc. Those would all be great things to have available as well.

F4S: How can people get involved with the project?

Andy: There’s an AWeather development website that includes a wiki and a bug tracker. These are both somewhat new and haven’t been used that much but I would like to see them used more.

F4S: What features are in the roadmap?

Andy: Adding boxes for tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings is probably the next big thing that will get included. There’s some code for this already, but the most challenging thing so far has been finding a really good data source to get the warning/watch/advisory information from.

Another important feature will be adding animation to the radar viewer.

F4S: Which projects, blogs or sites related to open source software for science can you recommend?

Andy: I don’t really read too many blogs, so I probably can’t help much there. And the projects I’ve used have been limited to topics of my own interests.

However I do have a few recommendations:

– Weka is a great resource for data mining and machine learning.
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/

– I’ve used OpenCV from time to time and have found that it has worked pretty
well. http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/

Andy: Email (andy753421@gmail.com) and IRC (#rhlug@irc.freenode.net) are usually pretty good ways to contact me.

If it’s about AWeather, the development wiki or the bug tracker might be the best way so it’s harder to lose track of.

F4S: Thanks Andy for sharing more about you and Aweather.

]]>http://www.floss4science.com/2017/04/28/interview-andy-spencer-developer-of-aweather-a-meteorological-data-viewer/feed/0http://www.floss4science.com/2017/04/28/interview-andy-spencer-developer-of-aweather-a-meteorological-data-viewer/FLOSS for Science Books November 2011http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlossForScience/~3/v6FrI_it6C0/
http://www.floss4science.com/2012/12/23/floss-for-science-books-november-2011/#respondSun, 23 Dec 2012 03:45:00 +0000http://www.floss4science.com/?p=36The following FLOSS for science related books were released during the month of November 2011. After reading this post you can browse a growing catalog of books that you can acquire through our FLOSS for Science Bookstore.

Note: Books have affiliate links.

Behavioral Research Data Analysis with R (Use R!)

This book is written for behavioral scientists who want to consider adding R to their existing set of statistical tools, or want to switch to R as their main computation tool. The authors aim primarily to help practitioners of behavioral research make the transition to R. The focus is to provide practical advice on some of the widely-used statistical methods in behavioral research, using a set of notes and annotated examples. The book will also help beginners learn more about statistics and behavioral research. These are statistical techniques used by psychologists who do research on human subjects, but of course they are also relevant to researchers in others fields that do similar kinds of research. The authors emphasize practical data analytic skills so that they can be quickly incorporated into readers’ own research.

An Introduction to Bootstrap Methods with Applications to R

This book provides both an elementary and a modern introduction to the bootstrap for students who do not have an extensive background in advanced mathematics. It offers reliable, hands-on coverage of the bootstrap’s considerable advantages — as well as its drawbacks. The book outpaces the competition by skillfully presenting results on improved confidence set estimation, estimation of error rates in discriminant analysis, and applications to a wide variety of hypothesis testing and estimation problems. To alert readers to the limitations of the method, the book exhibits counterexamples to the consistency of bootstrap methods. The authors take great care to draw connections between the more traditional resampling methods and the bootstrap, oftentimes displaying helpful computer routines in R. Emphasis throughout the book is on the use of the bootstrap as an exploratory tool including its value in variable selection and other modeling environments.

An R Companion to Linear Statistical Models

Focusing on user-developed programming, An R Companion to Linear Statistical Models serves two audiences: Those who are familiar with the theory and applications of linear statistical models and wish to learn or enhance their skills in R; and those who are enrolled in an R-based course on regression and analysis of variance. For those who have never used R, the book begins with a self-contained introduction to R that lays the foundation for later chapters.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Motion in Games, held in Edinburgh, UK, in November 2011. The 30 revised full papers presented together with 8 revised poster papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on character animation, motion synthesis, physically-based character motion, behavior animation, animation systems, crowd simulation, as well as path planning and navigation.

CUDA Application Design and Development

As the computer industry retools to leverage massively parallel graphics processing units (GPUs), this book is designed to meet the needs of working software developers who need to understand GPU programming with CUDA and increase efficiency in their projects. CUDA Application Design and Development starts with an introduction to parallel computing concepts for readers with no previous parallel experience, and focuses on issues of immediate importance to working software developers: achieving high performance, maintaining competitiveness, analyzing CUDA benefits versus costs, and determining application lifespan.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2011, held in Nara, Japan, from September 28 until October 1, 2011. The 32 papers presented together with 1 invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 119 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: FPGA implementation; AES; elliptic curve cryptosystems; lattices; side channel attacks; fault attacks; lightweight symmetric algorithms, PUFs; public-key cryptosystems; and hash functions.

This concise book introduces you to several strategies for using R to analyze large datasets. You’ll learn the basics of Snow, Multicore, Parallel, and some Hadoop-related tools, including how to find them, how to use them, when they work well, and when they don’t.

]]>http://www.floss4science.com/2012/12/23/floss-for-science-books-november-2011/feed/0http://www.floss4science.com/2012/12/23/floss-for-science-books-november-2011/FLOSS for Science Books December 2011http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlossForScience/~3/6c5RqH4yJVI/
http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/29/floss-for-science-books-december-2011/#respondSun, 29 Jan 2012 01:15:15 +0000http://www.floss4science.com/?p=4The following FLOSS for science related books were released during the month of December 2011. After reading this post you can browse a growing catalog of books that you can acquire through our FLOSS for Science Bookstore or check the listing from past months at the end of the post.

Note: Books have affiliate links.

R by Example

R by Example is an example-based introduction to the statistical computing environment that does not assume any previous familiarity with R or other software packages. R functions are presented in the context of interesting applications with real data. The purpose of this book is to illustrate a range of statistical and probability computations using R for people who are learning, teaching, or using statistics. Specifically, this book is written for users who have covered at least the equivalent of (or are currently studying) undergraduate level calculus-based courses in statistics. These users are learning or applying exploratory and inferential methods for analyzing data and this book is intended to be a useful resource for learning how to implement these procedures in R.earch.

Statistics and Data Analysis for Microarrays Using R and Bioconductor

Richly illustrated in color, Statistics and Data Analysis for Microarrays Using R and Bioconductor, Second Edition provides a clear and rigorous description of powerful analysis techniques and algorithms for mining and interpreting biological information. Omitting tedious details, heavy formalisms, and cryptic notations, the text takes a hands-on, example-based approach that teaches students the basics of R and microarray technology as well as how to choose and apply the proper data analysis tool to specific problems.

Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Inference: With Examples in R, SAS and ADMB

This book takes a fresh look at the popular and well-established method of maximum likelihood for statistical estimation and inference. It begins with an intuitive introduction to the concepts and background of likelihood, and moves through to the latest developments in maximum likelihood methodology, including general latent variable models and new material for the practical implementation of integrated likelihood using the free ADMB software. Fundamental issues of statistical inference are also examined, with a presentation of some of the philosophical debates underlying the choice of statistical paradigm.

Statistical Computing in C++ and R

Statistical Computing in C++ and R concentrates on the writing of code rather than the development and study of numerical algorithms per se. The book discusses code development in C++ and R and the use of these symbiotic languages in unison. It emphasizes that each offers distinct features that, when used in tandem, can take code writing beyond what can be obtained from either language alone.

Fundamentals of Multicore Software Development

Accessible to newcomers to the field, the book captures the state of the art of multicore programming in computer science. It covers the fundamentals of multicore hardware, parallel design patterns, and parallel programming in C++, .NET, and Java. It also discusses manycore computing on graphics cards and heterogeneous multicore platforms, automatic parallelization, automatic performance tuning, transactional memory, and emerging applications.

NumPy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide

This book will give you a solid foundation in NumPy arrays and universal functions. At the end of the book, we will explore related scientific computing projects such as Matplotlib for plotting and the SciPy project through examples.

The Geospatial Desktop

This book provides a foundational level of knowledge for understanding GIS and the open source desktop mapping applications that are available for use, for free, today. Learn about vector and raster data, how to convert data, interacting with spatial databases, creating new map data, geoprocessing, scripting, and more. Special sections include focused learning on the Quantum GIS and GRASS GIS software platforms but other packages are also introduced. The Geospatial Desktop is written by the creator of Quantum GIS, so you can rest assured that you will be led by one of the most knowledgeable authors on the subject.

Browse for more at the FLOSS for Science Bookstore.

]]>http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/29/floss-for-science-books-december-2011/feed/0http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/29/floss-for-science-books-december-2011/OpenMD version 1.1.5 releasedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlossForScience/~3/PIWpdE-ZES8/
http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/24/openmd-version-1-1-5-released/#respondTue, 24 Jan 2012 04:31:42 +0000http://www.floss4science.com/?p=64The OpenMD team announced the release of version 1.1.5 of their open source molecular dynamics engine which is capable of efficiently simulating liquids, proteins, nanoparticles, interfaces, and other complex systems.

Some of the changes:

Added the LangevinHull integrator and sample files.
Added “hull” token to selection syntax
BUGFIX: Added a check to make sure value matches data type of ForceField parameters
BUGFIX: We now traverse the base chains for NON-bonded interactions as well as bonded. This allows one to specify Metal – non-Metal interactions based on base types instead of exact matches.
Matched default Charges for OH and HO (Hydroxyl) to the values from OPLS paper.
BUGFIX: Changed dumpwriter to synchronize file writing to avoid file descriptor issues on large machines (>1000 nodes).
Added support for a stress correlation function.
BUGFIX: fixed a rare cutoff bug in calc_eam_prepair_rho
Added a staticProps module to compute the length of a nanorod
PERFORMANCE: Updated the BlockSnapshotManager to use a specified memory footprint in constructor and not to rely on physmem and residentMem to figure out free memory. DynamicProps is the only program that uses the BlockSnapshotManager, so substantial changes were needed there as well.
Fixed a clang compilation problem
Added the ability to output particle potential in the dump files
Added Momentum correlation function
Imported changes from Vector from development branch.
Added P4 order parameter to the computation done during director axis and P2 computation.
Added support to print Thermal Helfand Moment in the stat file.
Fixed typo in thermo.
Added RNEMD integrator.
Added vector source capability for the P2 order parameter in staticProps

]]>http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/24/openmd-version-1-1-5-released/feed/0http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/24/openmd-version-1-1-5-released/Interview with Ivan Idris author of NumPy 1.5 Beginner’s Guidehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlossForScience/~3/3LrwJzhW0gw/
http://www.floss4science.com/2012/01/24/interview-with-ivan-idris-author-of-numpy-1-5-beginners-guide/#respondTue, 24 Jan 2012 01:17:48 +0000http://www.floss4science.com/?p=6Today’s interview is with Ivan Idris, author of NumPy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide a book for developers or scientists with a little Python experience and wanting to test NumPy’s capabilities. We talk about the book, how it came to be and the experience writing it. Enjoy!

Ivan: My name is Ivan Idris and I have a MSc in Experimental Physics. My graduation thesis had a strong emphasis on Applied Computer Science. It involved building a state of the art real-time measurement system for a nuclear Physics lab. After graduating I worked for several companies as Software Developer using Open Source software.

As a Developer I have been part of a number of projects involving large scale, high performance numerical computations:

– Financial securities (mostly bonds) models.
– Real-time optimization and monitoring of network traffic for High Frequency Trading.
– Propensity/Engagement models in the context of web marketing in the cloud.

F4S: How did you get involved with open source software?

Ivan: In University I was introduced to Unix/Linux and I have been an avid user ever since. All the companies I have worked for use Open Source frameworks. The number of Pythonistas in IT is astonishingly high, especially amongst more experienced developers.

F4S: Tell us the story behind your book “NumPy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide”.

Ivan: The story behind my book is a bit funny. As a Senior Developer, I have a lot of freedom, when it comes to the implementation of solutions to complex problems, we face as a company. I frequently do spikes to investigate the feasibility of proposed approaches. When I am really enthusiastic about a certain Open Source project, that I have been experimenting with, I sometimes also blog about it.

One of those blogs must have triggered Packt Publishing. I got an offer by an acquisition editor at Packt to write the book and then the ball started rolling.

F4S: Who will benefit from reading it?

Ivan: NumPy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide is aimed at people interested to learn about NumPy with basic Python skills. The code in the book is pretty simple Python code. You can download the code from the publisher website or from the unofficial book website, that I created.

Another prerequisite is to have freshman year level mathematics knowledge or at least affinity with mathematics. Most of the mathematics needed in the book can also be learned from Wikipedia or Khan’s academy. I definitely recommend a refresher course from Khan’s academy, if necessary. Particularly the material about linear algebra and statistics.

On my blog there is a post entitled “Christmas NumPy Book Giveaway”, where 30+ people mentioned their reasons to want to read the book. I highly recommend reading those comments.

F4S: How will you describe your experience writing the book?

Ivan: The process of writing the book itself was very streamlined and professional. I worked together with a lot of Packt employees, such as acquisition editors, account managers, technical editors and now that the book is published with marketers.

The book had five technical reviewers who did not work for the publisher directly. They all work in the field of scientific computing. Some of them are scientists or they used to work at universities. At times it felt like I was back in university having my work checked by my professors. Thanks to the comments of the reviewers, the text achieved a much higher quality. Needless to say that going from the first drafts to the finished work took many iterations.

F4S: Have you published other FLOSS related books?

Ivan: I only have published one book thus far.

F4S: Do you have plans for other books?

Ivan: I don’t know exactly how much of the material I wrote for the book was published. My estimation is that twenty percent or more was edited out. I have received a lot of feedback on my book. New ideas emerged after publishing the book. Obviously, I would love to write another book on NumPy. There are no plans, however.

F4S: Why is free/libre open source scientific software important for your field?

Ivan: The commonly accepted wisdom is that Open Source software has many benefits:

People in my field tend to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Open Source software.

F4S: Which projects, books, blogs or sites related to open source software for science can you recommend?

Ivan: I have been reading the online documentation of NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib a lot. When it comes to blogs, I would recommend the blogs on Planet SciPy and the blogs of the technical reviewers. About a month ago I discovered SciPy Central with SciPy related content.

F4S: Is there any other topic you would like our readers to know about?

Ivan: The marketers are still looking for people to review the book. In exchange for your review on your blog or Amazon, you will receive a free copy. From time to time the publisher will organize contests where they will give away the book. One such contest is currently running at the time of writing (till end January 2012). If you are interested, please check my blog and book websites for announcements and ways to become a reviewer.